Best Cat Mom

29 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

The Ron Zacapa 23 is my favorite and I recommend if he's interested he try a rum old fashioned made with Zacapa 23. 

Yes, yes, yes! I had this drink for the first time on Seaside earlier this month. The mixologist at the Wine and Cocktails Bar by the specialty restaurants (Frederick) made it for me. I had asked for a Side Car but he did not have brandy and could not make it. He made this instead and I was hooked!! From then on, we exited YC every night just so I could have one (or two, or three, or...). 🙂

1 hour ago, ajusaf said:

any recommendations for new YClubber's?  Seems very similar to Haven but MSC is a different entity.

After our first MSC YC cruise in 2018, we never went back to Haven. The food was the biggest improvement to us. We had only traveled on NCL ships with "mini" Havens (the ones with no dedicated Haven restaurant) so we had the same lunch menu every day and no Haven restaurant for dinner.  YC had different menus every day for lunch and dinner plus the ability to special order just about anything with a little advance notice. We've been hooked ever since. The other plus for us was the Italian aspect. We've spent over 150 nights in Italy on land-based vacations. Cruising in general is okay to us, but add the Italian aspect and it's perfect for us. NCL cannot match that at all.

You should search for other threads here that compare YC to Haven. I recall that there have been a few. Or you can start your own thread and let everyone share anew. 🙂

I hope not -- we booked a 14-night B2B on Seascape in August 2024 just last week.

1 minute ago, Hutcha said:

I rarely saw a butler on the pool deck during the day.

We saw ours quite a bit, though he was not attired in the "regular" butler clothing. He was dressed appropriately for the 95+ degrees Fahrenheit temperatures. There may have been more butlers around than you realized.

40 minutes ago, Hutcha said:

I confirmed with the pool attendant that the others were FCFS.

On Seaside, we had a B2B and reserved a cabana for one day of our first cruise. Then we reserved one each day of the second cruise before the new passengers boarded since we knew that we would not be leaving the ship at the ports (except for lunch on Ocean Cay). There were only 2 YC cabins doing a B2B and the concierge encouraged us to reserve for all days, just like the other B2B cabin had already done.

FCFS seems especially tough for the butlers. Our butler would see us each morning when we had a cabana reserved and let us know that he had set it up with towels and our preferred beverages. If FCFS leads to multiple people in a cabana each day, the butlers would be extremely busy up there.

16 minutes ago, RD64 said:

Why does every cruise line have at least one thread per week for people that do not want to pay the gratuities?

The OP (Original Poster) who began this thread wants to tip, just wanted advice about it from others.

Hotel Director Yannis has moved from Seascape to Seashore this month.

In the next several months, YC Director Iancu Ravdan and YC Restaurant Manager Arthur will also move from Seascape to Seashore.

Sometime around January 2024, the new Seascape YC Restaurant Manager will be Mauricio, returning from his vacation after previously being in the same role on Divina.

Thanks to @morpheusofthesea for these updates! 🙂

1 minute ago, DaKahuna said:

we find it taste burnt and bitter, as it was made at midnight, boiled a couple of times, and served at 7 AM.

Our experience has always been that YC is fresh, from close by and brought right away. One butler -- Rodwyn -- would even phone us first to make sure we were awake to open the door. He was really great.

2 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

I wonder if I can order it by the carafe?

It's YC -- of course you can. We usually had enough for 2 cups each. If you want more, you should order it separately. Que horrible if it is not fresh. LOL

10 minutes ago, MrJulius said:

Our first order of business is a good cup of real, made to order, coffee as soon as we get up.

We would have the butler bring us coffee with Baileys every morning and enjoy it on our balcony. I highly recommend it as a great way to start your day. 🙂

On 9/24/2023 at 3:21 PM, morpheusofthesea said:

We all were greeted in the terminal by the YC director Iancu, who told us that Hotel Director Yannis(who left today to take over the helm of the Seashore is taking him as well to be YC director on the Seashore along with Arthur maitre ‘d, sometime after his vacation in January. Arthur’s replacement is an Italian Gentleman? Who has worked his way up in the MSC ranks.

May I quote this information in another thread, along with Mauricio's name as the "Italian Gentleman?"

Everywhere -- Top Sail Lounge, YC Restaurant, YC One Pool, or your Butler. 🙂

1 minute ago, morpheusofthesea said:

Across the road from Ocean House a new YC restaurant buffet style.

Thanks for the details. I'm most interested in this new buffet. If it is like the One Pool buffet, great way to offer more for YC but in a different way from just adding more tables. I was wondering how more tables would have enough servers, but a buffet makes that issue go away.

7 minutes ago, morpheusofthesea said:

Like this morning on the trolley ride to Ocean House, we quizzed the driver to elaborate on the coming changes to Ocean Cay. His stock reply was the company line "We are told not to tell, so that it will be a surprise."

When we asked, they answered more in the "not really sure" vein. Perhaps they have been given some concrete info now? I know that if anyone can find out, it'll be you. 🙂

1 hour ago, go.without.you said:

Where do you get the passenger list information?

On our last cruise, the YC Concierge was more than happy to tell us how many people were in YC, how many were B2B like us, and how many would be in YC the following week.

I was quite surprised to find that we had the famous -- or it is infamous -- Arnold as our butler on Seaside. He said that he had just moved from Seascape to Seaside and would be remaining on Seaside when it changed home ports from Florida to the French Caribbean. FYI for anyone looking for him. 🙂

12 hours ago, morpheusofthesea said:

... guests with plates of food from the buffet walk through the Jungle pool to get to these lifts ...

On our Seaside cruise that ended last week, there were multiple announcements "reminding" people to not remove food from the buffet area for "sanitary purposes." I found that surprising because I thought that buffet food could always be taken anywhere. (We're YC so we don't eat at the buffet but happened to hear the announcements while we were walking around outside of YC.) I would think this would be an interesting rule to try to enforce...

12 minutes ago, morpheusofthesea said:

Arthur’s replacement is an Italian Gentleman? Who has worked his way up in the MSC ranks.

Might this be Mauricio, who used to be on Divina? We sailed Divina last October and this past January and he was the manager of Le Muse then. He is also a sommelier and would offer some excellent surprise wines to accompany those great YC meals.

Also heard an update on two folks we knew from Divina:

Mauricio (YC Restaurant Manager) is on his holiday now; no word on his next ship yet.

Onel (YC Restaurant Server) is on Euribia.

On our recent Seaside cruise, the very first MSC person who greeted us in the YC check-in area knew us from one of our previous cruises. What a great way to start a cruise! A familiar and friendly face to welcome us on board set the tone for the next 12 days perfectly.

If you would like to share who is on your cruise, it will help us all keep track of our favorites and know who to expect on upcoming cruises.

I'll begin...

We disembarked from our Seaside 11-night Caribbean cruise on 14 September. We had a fantastic time thanks to the great MSC YC staff, with special mention to:

YC Director Maria Luca
YC Concierge Raj
YC Concierge Carolin
YC Concierge Ravi
YC Head Butler Luciano
YC Assistant Head Butler Rizwan
YC Butler Arnold
YC Junior Butler Kadek
YC Butler Agus
YC Junior Butler Marinette
YC Butler Vijay
YC Lounge Butler Thomas
YC Lounge Butler Ariann
YC Lounge Butler Sylvia
YC Bartender Adnya
YC Restaurant Manager Ercan
YC Restaurant Sommelier Felix
YC Restaurant Hostess Fabiana
YC Restaurant Server Sukron
YC Restaurant Server Manuel
YC Restaurant Server Katna
YC Restaurant Server Justine

And a special mention to one non-YC person:
"Mixologist" Frederick, bartender at the Wine and Cocktails Bar, by the specialty restaurants just outside the YC on Deck 16

In YC, you can get envelopes from the Concierge desk. The concierges are also great help when you want to know how to spell names to write on the envelopes. 😉

Other people to consider tipping in YC are the concierges, the restaurant manager and host(s), the head butler, and the more attentive Top Sail Lounge butlers.

Looking forward to hearing all about your week, Morph!

Many Travel Agents "reward" their customers with high amounts of OBC. We had over $1K last cruise, around 15% of the total spend on our YC cabin.

No fee. You don't need to play at all. We just sailed Seaside last week and the week before. We loaded up several times to cash out our OBC since it was too much to take out at once. We played a bit with two separate receipts, but cashed out the other having never used it.

42 minutes ago, mnpurple said:

We missed Ocean Cay as well. I was bummed and we didn't get any credit for missing it.  They might have been better to offer a credit. This being a longer cruise, it ended up being the third sea day and those not in YC were getting unruly from what I heard. We were glad to have the space of the YC.

I think we were on that cruise with you -- late Jan/early Feb on Divina? Skipping OC did cause quite an upset with the non-YC guests. Bodies were everywhere on the deck, many not even on loungers. Could barely get around them to walk to Le Muse. 😞